This summer my son Chippy and I have been watching the John Ford/John Wayne westerns.
So far we have screened “Stagecoach,” “Fort Apache,” and “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.”
“Stagecoach” is easily the best of the three, possessing a nearly perfect screenplay and memorable characters, major and minor.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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“Fort Apache” is marred, I think, by a too-angular character played by Henry Fonda, Lt. Col. Owen Thursday, whose pride causes him to lead the men under his command into a slaughter.
But it’s a line, repeated several times, from “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon” that prompts this post. “Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness,” Captain Brittles says to several of his younger officers as well as their love interest, Olivia, played by the beautiful Joanne Dru.
Captain Nathan Brittles, played by John Wayne, is second in command of a troop of indian-fighting soliders in Monument Valley, Utah (where else?).
I’m sure the screenwriters, Frank Nugent and Laurance Stallings, didn’t have Nietzsche’s critique of the Christian virtues in mind — he called them “slave virtues” — when they used those words to help define Brittles’ character.
My father and many of the men of his generation, the generation of Ford and Wayne, by the way, did regard apologies as somehow a violation of their Stoic militarism.
I tend to think the opposite, it’s the refusal to apologize that is a sign of weakness. The weakness in question is a fear of what others will think if a man admits to making a serious mistake. It’s a kind of moral cowardice, in fact, since the fear of disapproval or scorn keeps a man from seeking what is good.
Yet, the conclusion of the film seems to contradict Brittle’s maxim that only the weak apologize. Facing his commanding officer, Brittle confesses the failure of his last mission before retirement, and then sneaks off to earn redemption.
As I think across the Ford/Wayne canon, including “The Quiet Man,” I can think of several themes that compromise the ‘manliness’ of Wayne’s persona. I’m thinking of the way women so often intervene to stop fights and to civilize male behavior in general.
Come to think of it, the “never apologize” line may be mere posturing, nothing more.